


bloodied holy creature

by starlineshine



Series: Naruto Femslash Week 2018 [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Naruto Femslash Week 2018, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Uchiha Clan - Freeform, Unrequited Love, female main character, this fic is out to hurt you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 00:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlineshine/pseuds/starlineshine
Summary: “I don’t need your help!” Kushina spits out, digging another kunai out of her pouch.“I’m good with kunai,” she offers and when she speaks her words are nothing like Kushina’s. Mikoto wishes she could shout like that, scream like that, have her voice so bursting with character and power but Mikoto can’t. Uchiha Mikoto isn’t allowed to feel anything. Maybe this is why Kushina feels so much. Maybe they are soulmates, even if—Kushina turns on her like a wild animal on prey, teeth bared. “Go away!”No. The words clearly mean nothing.





	bloodied holy creature

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Naruto Femslash Week 2018!! Day 7 (September 2): **Free Day**. It's been so fun yall!

Mikoto’s soulmark says: _I’m going to be Hokage._

This disappoints her. She does not want to be a ninja.

.

Uchiha Mikoto doesn't want to be a ninja, but that's what she's going to be, so she tries not to cling too tightly to her mother's hand. If she holds on too tight Mother scolds her. The academy looms in front of her, massive and terrifying. The second Hokage built it out of necessity. The Elemental Nations are constantly at war, and people to fight that war are a necessity.

Mikoto doesn't want to fight a war. When she says as much to her mother, Mikoto expects a scolding. Mother leans down close. "It's your responsibility, Mikoto," she says. And Mikoto knows this. She has been alive six years and she already knows this. She knows her responsibility to Konoha, to the Uchiha. She has a name to uphold. She is the firstborn daughter of the Uchiha clan third branch family head. Uchiha Mikoto holds her name as an honor, a weight. When she could walk, she was made to run, and when she could run, she was made to fight. Mikoto's six years old, but she has already started to learn taijutsu, has already been taught how her chakra circulates and how to expel it.

The Uchiha train their own. The academy is for rank. The clan is what will make Mikoto strong. And she has to be strong, because she’s going to be a ninja.

"I know, Mother," Mikoto whispers. She doesn't want to be a ninja. Mikoto wants to be like the Inuzuka, maybe, take care of animals. Or maybe she wants to open a bakery. She doesn't particularly like sweets but she loves baking them. Or maybe she could work with flowers, the way the Yamanaka do. Or she could—

But she can't. This is her responsibility.

"This is your first day," Mother says. "Make a good impression."

"Yes, Mother," Mikoto agrees. She doesn't want to be a ninja. But it's what she has to do, and she is an Uchiha. Mother releases her hand and Mikoto takes a few steps forward. Other children are rushing around her, spilling into the building, but Mikoto takes slow steps past the Academy's massive tree, up the solidly packed dirt path, up the two tiny stairs and then through the doorway. The doors shut behind her, deceptively quiet.

Uchiha Mikoto doesn’t want to be a ninja, but she’s going to be.

.

When a tiny girl with red hair and a red face stands in front of the class Mikoto is not impressed. She looks uncomfortable, eyes darting around the room before landing on the far wall.

“We have a transfer student today,” Ito-sensei says. “Her name is Uzumaki Kushina.”

The girl shakes his hand off her back. She opens her mouth to speak, looking like she’s about to shout something, but only a squeak comes out. Laughter sprouts across the classroom. At the sound, Kushina shrinks.

“Look at the color of her hair,” someone behind Mikoto says. “How can anyone have hair like that?”

“How can you get hair that red?”

She knows what they must be thinking about this girl: Imposter. Foreigner. Konoha still thinks it about the Uchiha even now.

“Hey, hey!” Ito-sensei waves his arms. “Be quiet! Hush!”

Kushina’s hands go into fists and then she raises her head, eyes so harsh Mikoto can’t remember what she looked like quelled. “I'm going to be Hokage!” the girl declares, announces. “I’m going to become this village’s first female Hokage, so all of you better shut up!”

All laughter stops. When Mikoto looks at her—Uzumaki Kushina—she doesn't see anything impressive. She's got thick red hair and a rounded face and tiny hands in two tiny fists at her side. There isn't anything about her.

But Mikoto believes her. _I'm going to be Hokage,_ Kushina said and Mikoto believes her. The kids around her don't. But the mark on Mikoto’s ribs, the inked words over her bones, they sting, as though before they were merely pencilled and now someone’s tattooing them for real. Mikoto’s soul words sting. This girl says she’s going to be Hokage. Mikoto believes her.

.

Mikoto once stumbles on Kushina practicing with her kunai. She keeps missing, the kunai hitting the very edges of the target in tiny dull thuds of knife against wood. “I can teach you,” Mikoto says. Her words are all tight and afraid and nervous and she takes a few careful steps closer to Kushina. “If you want.”

If Kushina is her soulmate—and Mikoto’s very certain, very sure of this, very very completely positive Uzumaki Kushina is her soulmate she can feel it in her chest and she can feel it in her dry throat and she can feel it in her shaky fingers—then these words should matter. These words should make some mark on Kushina go stinging. These words should matter to her. These words should be the beginning of something. Kushina should care. These words should matter.

“I don’t need your help!” Kushina spits out, digging another kunai out of her pouch.

“I’m good with kunai,” she offers and when she speaks her words are nothing like Kushina’s. Mikoto wishes she could shout like that, scream like that, have her voice so bursting with character and power but Mikoto can’t. Uchiha Mikoto isn’t allowed to feel anything. Maybe this is why Kushina feels so much. Maybe they are soulmates, even if—

Kushina turns on her like a wild animal on prey, teeth bared. “Go away!”

No. The words clearly mean nothing.

.

Uchiha Mikoto is twelve years old and her clan has picked her a husband. Uchiha Mikoto is twelve years old, a chuunin shinobi of Konoha, born of one of its noble clans, and she is expected to marry.

The boy—the man? is he a man?—she’s to marry will not look at her, even as her mother continues to negotiate. He’s the main branch head’s eldest son. He’s seventeen years old. He sits behind his father and somehow looks very young to her as well as very old. The curve of his jaw is too sharp for a child but the inherent wideness to his eyes doesn’t belong in a man’s face. She stares at him. He doesn’t stare back. He looks at his hands, in fists on his knees. Maybe that’s the polite thing to do.

Mikoto wonders if he has a soulmate. She wonders if it matters.

“She will be available for engagement as soon as her thirteenth birthday passes,” Mother says.

She wonders if she should tell Kushina. This thought dies as soon as it flowers.

The clan head nods, considering. His eyes peel over to her like they’re stripping off paint, like he’s leaving her exposed without even touching her. “You understand, girl, that this is a great honor,” he says.

“I understand,” she says.

“Once you are engaged, you cannot break the agreement,” he says. “You would shame your clan. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Mikoto says again.

“Our daughter will not shame this clan,” Mother says. Mikoto wonders if her father would have said anything differently. She will never know. He is dead. “She will accept and honor this great gift with pride.” He probably wouldn’t have said anything differently.

She will marry as soon as her eighteenth birthday passes.

.

Mikoto isn’t married yet so she isn’t pregnant yet so she’s allowed to fight in the war. She hates that—she never wanted to be a ninja but she is one and she’s _good_ at it. She’s a killer and a fighter and for a side branch child, her sharingan is unbelievably strong. For a main branch child, even, she would have been considered something like a genius.

“We picked a good match,” the clan head told her when she became a jounin at age fourteen, her hands forever bloody and her face turned towards war. “You’re a strong one. Your children will be fit to lead.”

_I’m_ fit to lead, Mikoto wanted to scream. I am! Me! I’m strong! Me! Don’t talk about my future children! I’m here!

She’s stationed in the same battalion as Kushina. They’re both the heaviest hitters in the group, two of only ten jounin. It makes her sick. This battalion is mostly chuunin, and the chuunin should be genin, if they weren’t promoted early to make them available for warfare.

Mikoto scrubs at the blood on her cheeks. She closes her eyes but that only makes it worse. Dead, dead, dead. Some of the other jounin, the older ones, pray—for what? Please, oh god, let my knife turn an Iwa nin to a corpse rather than the other way around? Please, please, please, let the enemy writhe and let the enemy scream, let the enemy be the nation of orphaned children and broken cities?

Mikoto doesn’t pray. She kills for this country. She refuses to pray for her.

She scrubs harder.

“You got it all,” someone says and Mikoto’s entire body goes tense, muscles howling but if she dies here it’s no loss. Her mother will grow old and die and the clan head will make a new match for Fugaku. It is no loss. She doesn’t like being right inside camp. Too much blood, too much rot. It’s her own fault, really.

A hand on her shoulder. Another hand takes the towel away from her face. Mikoto looks up to dark eyes and red hair. Kushina probably isn’t going to kill her. It’s a relief and a disappointment. “There’s nothing else on your face,” Kushina says. “You got it all.”

There’d been blood on her face because when you slit a throat at the wrong angle blood splatters. Mikoto deserves to have blood on her face because when you kill a kid, a child probably not even fifteen, there should be something horrible to show for it.

“Thanks,” Mikoto says. Her hands are trembling. She and Kushina have fought side by side, have killed while the other could see, have been evil together. They don’t speak but sometimes when Kushina won’t eat, when she’s only staring at the sky with her hands twitching and her eyes blank, Mikoto wakes her up, makes her stuff some rice down before she goes back to contemplating her personal horror show.

“Let’s go back to camp, okay?” Kushina flings the towel aside and offers Mikoto a hand. When she takes it, when their fingers slide together and link with each other, it’s so warm. For some reason this makes Mikoto want to start crying.

She doesn’t.

“We’re not gonna die, okay?” Kushina squeezes her hand, grins. “We’re gonna survive this. Okay?”

For a second Mikoto’s free hand plays with the edge of her shirt. She wants to pull it off, to strip the cloth away and bring Kushina’s hand to the words on her rib cage, to the _I’m going to be Hokage_ and hold them there. She wants to say I love you and I believe you you’re going to be Hokage and I want to be there we’re soulmates please let me _be there_ and she wants to say it so badly she hurts from it, aches.

“Besides,” Kushina says, releasing Mikoto’s hand, “I got someone waiting for this whole thing to end so we can get married or something. If he’s not dying, I’m not dying, either. So let’s go back, okay?”

Mikoto doesn’t say any of those things. She lets go of the edge of her shirt. “Okay,” she says. And then they go back to camp.

.

“You’re my best friend,” Kushina tells her once, halfway drunk and leaning against her on the trip back to Kushina’s apartment. “You know that, right? Mikoto—” Kushina stops, leans against the railing of the stairway up to her door. When Mikoto looks into her eyes they’re too earnest. To look at them hurts. “You’re my best friend.”

“I know,” Mikoto says. “You’re my best friend, too.”

“I can’t believe you’re already married,” Kushina says after only a few moments of silence. She struggles to get her key in the lock and drops it. Mikoto picks it up. Unlocks the door. “Do you think that means Minato and I should get married?”

“I don’t know,” Mikoto says. She did not want to get married. She doesn’t want Kushina to get married. _I’m going to be Hokage_ thrums against her skin. Very carefully, without any of the inflection she wants to put in that would imply she has any stake in this, she asks, “Do you want to get married?”

Kushina says, “Hmm.” Mikoto leads her into the apartment. “I don’t know.” Mikoto helps Kushina take off her shoes and Kushina goes, “Wouldn’t it be so fun if I could marry you, Mikoto? Then we could really be best friends forever.” Kushina laughs. “But we’re not gay, and you’re already married. Sad.”

Mikoto swallows past the thickness in her throat. She feels something very small and very delicate start to burst at the seams inside her. “That would have been fun,” she says very stiffly and very quietly and she isn’t going to cry. “It’s too bad.”

Kushina makes a noise of agreement. She’s asleep before Mikoto has even loaded her into bed.

Two days after Mikoto finds out she’s pregnant. The clan head is overjoyed. Fugaku is twenty three years old and somehow both very young and very old and he doesn’t seem to care either way.

.

Kushina gets married. Kushina gets pregnant. Kushina is so, so happy.

“I know you got started before me,” she needles, repositioning herself to eat a bit easier while still accommodating her bulging stomach, “but our kids are gonna be best friends, okay? Just like us.” Kushina wiggles on the ramen stand stool, awkwardly maneuvering herself to face Mikoto. She shoves more noodles in her mouth and then, through them, says, “Alright, Mikoto?” She swallows. “Just like us. Best friends!”

_Just like us._

“I hope they get along,” she says, and she does. Mikoto would love for their children to be friends. Maybe best friends. That would be cute. Itachi doesn’t seem to get along well with children his age. When she picks him up from the academy he never talks about any of his classmates. Mikoto glances out at the street, up the path to the academy. It’s almost time to go get him. Maybe he made a friend today. But if Sasuke could be friends with Kushina’s child, that would be cute.

Privately, though, Mikoto wouldn’t want their children to be friends the same way Mikoto and Kushina are friends. Kushina is so happy and Mikoto hurts. She looks down at the baby in her arms—Sasuke, her tiny baby, so small and so delicate—and she doesn’t want him to have a soulmark at all, if they go like this.

_I’m going to be Hokage._ Kushina doesn’t love her and she isn’t Hokage. Her husband is, though, and Kushina’s so, so happy.

“Pff!” Kushina waves her hand in dismissal. “Hope? Nah. I already know. They’re totally gonna love each other.”

Mikoto looks down at her baby again, looks at Sasuke’s soft face and soft sleeping smile. “I hope so,” she says again. “That would be really nice.”

“Right?” Kushina puts her hands on her hips. She wiggles just a bit precariously on the stool.

“Be careful,” Mikoto chides, adjusting Sasuke in her arms so she can look appropriately scolding.

“God, you’re such a mom,” Kushina says, laughing, and Mikoto holds Sasuke just a bit tighter. Kushina’s eyes drop to Sasuke and she goes all soft, her features turning gentle and her smile becoming quiet. This side of Kushina, full of kindness and longing—this domestic side of Kushnia—does not belong to her. “I can’t wait to be a mom, too.”

.

Mikoto’s not arrogant enough to say she knows what Kushina’s dreams were. Perhaps in order they would be: Become Hokage, become a mother, be happy.

Kushina never becomes Hokage. She will never be a mother. She can’t be happy now that she’s dead.

_I’m going to become Hokage._

Kushina isn’t hokage. Kushina doesn’t love her. Kushina is dead. For the first time in over a decade Mikoto cries.

.

When Mikoto dies it is her son that kills her. When Mikoto dies it is no loss.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! we're living it up in [gama-chan party](https://discord.gg/g25p3S3), on discord! join n have fun
> 
> also feel free to chat w me on [tumblr](https://starlineshine.tumblr.com/)!


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